“A writer,or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end”.-Jorge Luis Borges In the essay, Blindness, Jorge Luis Borges describes the many strengths and weakness that originate being a blind man to an audience who does not know what it feels like to actually be blind. He conveys this idea throughout his essay through the use of different rhetorical elements such as ethos and pathos. Borges uses ethos to show readers that he has experienced what it is like to be blind, and pathos unintentionally to have the reader feel certain emotions such as empathy. As he describes the weaknesses, but then switches to a sort of hopeful tone as he describes his strengths. Borges also combines the
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He uses this oxymoron to show readers the different aspects of being blind, both literally and figuratively.“Blindness is a gift. I have exhausted you with the gifts it has given me\. It gave me Anglo- Saxon, it gave me Scandanavian, it gave me knowledge of a Medieval literature I had ignored, it gave me the writing of various books, good or bad, but which justified the moment in which they were written.” Borges believes that through his blindness, he has overcome his prior ignorance to the different aspects of the world he once ignored,and through this obtained gifts he may have never discovered. This is one of the few times in this piece where he describes the power of being “blind” and he enumerates many other examples as well as weaknesses. Although blindness has become one of Borges’ strengths it still is seen partly as a weakness. “In 1955 the pathetic moment came when I knew I had lost my sight, my reader's and writer’s sight.” Losing his reader and writer’s sight, he has lost his ability to look at literature the way he used to. He no longer could easily look at texts and analyze them rather now this would be much more difficult using braille as an alternative. All in all Borges’ identifies and explains that even though he is proud of his blindness it has cut him off from the world he use to
He uses this oxymoron to show readers the different aspects of being blind, both literally and figuratively.“Blindness is a gift. I have exhausted you with the gifts it has given me\. It gave me Anglo- Saxon, it gave me Scandanavian, it gave me knowledge of a Medieval literature I had ignored, it gave me the writing of various books, good or bad, but which justified the moment in which they were written.” Borges believes that through his blindness, he has overcome his prior ignorance to the different aspects of the world he once ignored,and through this obtained gifts he may have never discovered. This is one of the few times in this piece where he describes the power of being “blind” and he enumerates many other examples as well as weaknesses. Although blindness has become one of Borges’ strengths it still is seen partly as a weakness. “In 1955 the pathetic moment came when I knew I had lost my sight, my reader's and writer’s sight.” Losing his reader and writer’s sight, he has lost his ability to look at literature the way he used to. He no longer could easily look at texts and analyze them rather now this would be much more difficult using braille as an alternative. All in all Borges’ identifies and explains that even though he is proud of his blindness it has cut him off from the world he use to